blog.andrelareau.com

So I have been a busy little beaver setting up this blog and my photoblog. I have it all set up on Movable Type and there are some things I really like about it and some things that kind of suck.

So here's the scoop:
• Yea:
  • It's all in one place, on my own fucking server. No more waiting for LiveJournal or MySpace to crash while I'm typing an entry. I'm lazy enough, I don't need any more excuses to not post. It's all mine, it's backed up, it's all here in case I want to get at the internals.
  • It is very configurable. It's basically a subset of HTML. I'm familiar with HTML and CSS so that makes it pretty easy to figure out what the hell is going on.
  • Lots of people use it. This means that people have already figured out most of what I want to do. I hate spending time immersed in code, even though I'm fairly clever at it when I put my mind to it. I'd much rather be out taking pictures or down in the basement making music.
  • The backend is slick. You can't see it, but that's what I deal with. So, yeah.
  • It's free.
• Nay:
  • The included templates SUCK. Big time. I can't stand this one, but I'm so burnt from doing the photoblog templates that I don't feel like fucking around with it to change it.
  • Documentation can be skimpy. I've had to search out a shitload of third party sites for such seemingly-simple tasks as enabling popup comments. I mean, aren't there like 5,000 photoblogs out there? And NO ONE has designed a SIMPLE way to do this? WTF?
  • It's not all that cohesive. For example. I have a LiveJournal, and LiveJournal is owned by the same company as Movable Type. So you'd think they'd make a script that could go through and suck out all my old LiveJournal entries and fart them out into Movable Type. No such luck. Apparently I have to copy and paste two years' worth of entries and comments from one web site to the other. Gay.
  • I still can't "broadcast" my journal entries where these things would actually be read. OK so I've got rss, but who the fuck even knows how to use it? I wish there were some easy way to simply syndicate all my Movable Type blog entries to LiveJournal, MySpace and all the other places where my info is posted. There was a plugin for WordPress that posted to LiveJournal, but it looks like the way to do it with Movable Type is to get a paid LiveJournal account and set up an RSS feed.

  Posted by dre at 02:20 PM | Permalink

Even the fire escapes look like they're decorated by a five-year-old. No wonder the place is so damn expensive.

Got on A Wilhelm Scream's guest list. Woo hoo! Those guys are great. They played extremely well, also. It was a treat watching all the excitement from the stage. The crowd was totally into them, it was cool.

No pictures because when I wondered to Nick if they'd let me in with my camera, he said, "no chance." So I left mine at home. Holy crap I could have taken 1,000 pictures last night.

Today is Valentine's Day. Who fucking cares? I'm staying late at work and getting some shit done. Hallmark holidays be damned.

Posted by dre at 05:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Chappelle clears things up on Oprah.

Interesting rumor theory here.

Posted by dre at 05:31 PM | Permalink

I'm getting closer and closer to having a working photo blog. It's kind of exciting to see everything coming together. I was able to post a picture for my last "proper" blog post, as you can see... That's pretty exciting, too.

Still have some work to do, not the least of which is that I want to think of a more creative title for this blog than my freaking name. I have a love/hate relationship with my name. Sometimes I think it's cool, sometimes I think it's kind of lame.

I'm thinking about getting a flickr account, as a repository for the "lesser" of my photos. I'm thinking the photoblog will be a sort of gallery where I post my best stuff, and flickr would enable me to post photos of my family and stuff that is probably best seen only by my family and immediate friends. I'm pretty sure flickr allows you to password-protect certain directories, so it'd be cool to do that. Also, I haven't quite figured out commenting on the new photoblog...

I'm actually pretty self-conscious about publishing *any* of my photographs. When I was a kid I loved to draw, but I had quite a few bad experiences with art teachers in high school which pretty much turned me off to the "official" art world. As such I never really thought much of any artistic ability I had, and I pretty much neglected it. I have always loved things that are both technical and creative, and photography, like music, is both of those things. As I take more and more pictures, and really get to know the medium, I'm finding even more freedom than I really expected. I had a general idea of the "rule of thirds" and a fairly basic appreciation of color, but I'm finding it exceptionally challenging to try and capture what I find interesting about a scene. There's only one or two shots that I've taken -- out of thousands, I'm sure -- that really strike a chord in me.

It is a lot like music for me, in that certain aspects of photography are really awful and boring. If I hear one more screamo band I'll probably just punch a wall until my hands break. Similarly, pictures of flowers, portrait photography (other than some really weird fashion stuff), and most of the pictures I see on my coworkers' desks of their bright and talented and utterly boring kids almost make me lose faith that anyone can even appreciate what I'm trying to put across.

At the same time, I can listen to something off-the-wall, like old Oingo Boingo, and get inspired to write a fast punk anthem about soldiers in Iraq. I can look at a photo on Yahoo! News and see something that makes me try something different with my camera. The benefit of photography compared to music is that, in photography, at least with my digital SLR, the feedback is more or less instant. I can tell right away if a shot or sequence is going to work. With music, there's a long and often arduous process of recording, tweaking, developing, rewriting, and so forth that has to be done before you see a finished product -- if it even makes it that far. Much of it is dependent on your bandmembers' moods and your way of presenting it to them. Not that it's bad that way -- I love making music, don't get me wrong (and in particular, I love the band I'm in) -- it's just a different type of creativity.

I don't know. I'm just anxious to get the whole blog taken care of and get the photoblog off the ground. I have a ton of pictures to put out there.

Posted by dre at 11:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Posted by dre at 09:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I just discovered that Movable Type is free. I find this out now, after I've spent like 3 months tearing my hair out getting WordPress and Folderblog to cooperate. With Movable Type I can do it all with one piece of software, I don't need two different freaking blogs.

Rats.

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Posted by dre at 02:02 PM | Permalink